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Topic: When to Step Back from a Friendship (Read 7847 times)

I am friends with a couple who are great people. Recently, the husband lost his job, and he also started a special diet, that is only sold through representatives. He was very successful, according to the large amount of posts on a social media site about it. I am happy for him.

However, he is now representing this special diet and its products. Nearly every post (3-5 per day) he makes on the social media site is about this product and signing up other representatives. It looks to be another MLM type organization.

What would you do? Keep things how they are, or distance yourself?

I am opposed to constant sales tactics from people who are supposed to be friends, but I also understand that he may be wrapped up in the hype generated by the organization.

It doesn't seem that he has approached you personally about these products or messaged you about them privately. If all he is doing is posting about it on his FB page, why not just change your settings to avoid having to look at them? He hasn't pushed you on buying them yet, so it doesn't seem like you have to step back all that much at this point.

As long as he's not trying to rope you in against your will, I see no reasons to step back. If he asks once and accepts your "no, thanks", nothing has really changed in you friendship with this couple.

If he starts hounding you and talks about nothing else, I would dial back a bit and see where it goes. It may just be a phase.

This is where a facebook filter can come in handy. It will hide the posts about the stuff you don't want to see, while letting other stuff come through.

A friend of mine is the extreme opposite of me politically. However we do share other opinions. I have my filter set to block anything I don't want to see from him and let other stuff through. It works great and it's definitely helped to save our friendship.

I'm going with the PPs here. If it's just that you don't want to see this on FB, you can easily change your settings so as not to see it. It doesn't sound like he's pushing it on you, just praising it in general.

I've got a family member who did the same thing. It eventually calmed down. I made one post bemoaning my weight, she responded to me in a PM and I told her politely I wasn't interested and that was the end of it.

At the very least, I'd hide him from my newsfeed and check in every once in a while to see how his fam was doing.

I did this with someone. while she is a lovely person, some of her posts were a bit over the top, so I hid her feed, and just check in every now and again. its a friend of a friend, someone i don't know all that well, so no biggie. she will sometimes comment on my posts, and me on hers, but not having to see all she posts day in and day out is better for me.

I've seen some of these diet posts and one person does them at least once a day but it's usually referring to herself "I'm down x lbs because of this diet! If anyone's looking to lose weight, let me know!" Or posting pictures of herself and the progress she's made. I'll give her this, she has lost weight and she looks slimmer than she was when I last saw her in person, and in a fit and healthy way, not a "I'm smiling despite depriving myself of tasty food and I'm always hungry!" kind of diet.

Logged

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

What would be your limit though? At least 4 of his daily posts are about how wonderful (product) is and wouldn't you like to try it?

It doesn't matter what our limit would be. You can have any limit you want. Your personal limit can be zero. You would be completely fine and polite to have your limit be zero. I don't think Etiquette would allow you to have a *negative* limit (i.e., -3 posts about the diet).

You get to decide that all for yourself, and no one--no one--can tell you that you are wrong for picking your own limit.

However, I'm not sure how well you can tweak Facebook settings to be successful at hitting the limit you want. Have fun playing around!

I knew he was getting a bit fanatical when every meal time was accompanied by a picture of whatever meal replacement item he was having and raving comments about it, but I didn't realize he was selling the product and recruiting until this week.

Just go into your friends setting, pick him and you can block his posts from your page and he won't know (have done this with someone who was going off the rails with out there political posts). He will still see yours and be able to post but his won't pop up on yours.

What would be your limit though? At least 4 of his daily posts are about how wonderful (product) is and wouldn't you like to try it?

My limit is less than one a week. I don't mind occasional posts ("Hey, down X pounds from this diet. It's still working great for me, let me know if any of you want to try it!") once every few weeks, but more than that and I'm changing settings and getting really annoyed. If you want to hawk a product, that's fine, but do it from a separate FB account. I love the updates about friends and family, I hate seeing business products on there.

Then again, that's just me. Everyone's tolerances are different. Find a limit that works for you and stick with it.